One of the responsibilities of leaders is as the curators of culture. It is pretty evident that the personality of a leader has an outsized effect on the culture of the team that they lead.
I have seen people adopt the phrases used by their leaders in their vocabulary, the mannerisms of the leaders in their physical presence and the mental frames that leaders use in their thinking.
If the leader responds to every email within an hour of receiving them, the chances are that their team is doing the same.
If the leader clears their email during weekends and holidays, the chances are that their teams will do the same as well.
As leaders we need to be aware of this phenomenon and be mindful of the kind of culture we are creating within our teams. We need to be aware that we are always being watched by our teams and in a lot of scenarios being relived as well. Our good qualities are magnified and so are our bad qualities.
This means that as leaders, we need to be extra careful about how we turn up to lead and be intentional about every act that we do.
One way to do that is to curate what we want our culture to be like. Once we decide what kind of culture we want to build within our team, we can then start turning up by personifying that culture in our behaviour.
If we want cognitive diversity within our team, we start encouraging the same intentionally.
If we want our teams to be inclusive, we include different voices within our teams and build rituals and habits to include the different voice.
If we want our teams to take risks, we need to not only be seen taking risks but also seen and heard promoting and celebrating people who take risks.
If we want our teams to think out of the box, we need to start thinking outside the box and celebrate people who do that within our teams.
In order to cement this as the culture of the team, we need to build a ritual around these behaviours that we want our culture to represent and celebrate everyone who behaves this way. We need to hire, promote and celebrate based on these cultural behaviours. Over time, the team gets the message and people will either put up their hands and work towards building and protecting this culture and anyone who doesn’t belong or doesn’t want to belong in this culture will leave.
We are creating a culture within the team that we lead, whether we are intentional about it or not. The team’s culture is a lot more dependent on our behaviour than we usually think.
With this position, also comes responsibility. The question is are we stepping up and are being intentional about how we turn up?
